Twilight Sleep (5 page)

"How absurd! I asked you not to wait. I suppose you think I'm not
old enough to be out alone after dark."

"That hadn't occurred to me; and I'm not waiting to walk home with
you," Heuston rejoined with some asperity. "But I do want to say
two words," he added, his voice breaking into persuasion.

Nona stopped, her heels firmly set on the pavement. "The same old
two?"

"No. Besides, there are three of those. You never COULD count."
He hesitated: "This time it's only about Arthur—"

"Why; what's the matter?" The sense of apprehension woke in her
again. What if Wyant really had begun to suspect that there was
something, an imponderable something, wrong between Jim and Lita,
and had been too shrewd to let Nona detect his suspicion?

"Haven't you noticed? He looks like the devil. He's been drinking
again. Eleanor spoke to me—"

"Oh, dear." There it was—all the responsibilities and worries
always closed in on Nona! But this one, after all, was relatively
bearable.

"What can I do, Stan? I can't imagine why you come to ME!"

He smiled a little, in his queer derisive way. "Doesn't everybody?
The fact is—I didn't want to bother Jim."

She was silent. She understood; but she resented his knowing that
she understood.

"Jim has got to be bothered. He's got to look after his father."

"Yes; but I—Oh, look here, Nona; won't you see?"

"See what?"

"Why—that if Jim is worried about his father now—Jim's a queer
chap; he's tried his hand at fifty things, and never stuck to one;
and if he gets a shock now, on top of everything else—"

Nona felt her lips grow hard: all her pride and tenderness for her
brother stiffened into ice about her heart.

"I don't know what you mean. Jim's grown up—he's got to face
things."

"Yes; I know. I've been told the same thing about myself. But
there are things one doesn't ever have a chance to face in this
slippery sliding modern world, because they don't come out into the
open. They just lurk and peep and mouth. My case exactly. What
on earth is there about Aggie that a fellow can FACE?"

Nona stopped short with a jerk. "We don't happen to be talking
about you and Aggie," she said.

"Oh, well; I was merely using myself as an example. But there are
plenty of others to choose from."

Her voice broke into anger. "I don't imagine you're comparing your
married life to Jim's?"

"Lord, no. God forbid!" He burst into a dry laugh. "When I think
of Aggie's life and Lita's—!"

"Never mind about Lita's life. What do you know about it, anyhow?
Oh, Stan, why are we quarrelling again?" She felt the tears in her
throat. "What you wanted was only to tell me about poor Arthur.
And I'd guessed that myself—I know something ought to be done.
But WHAT? How on earth can I tell? I'm always being asked by
everybody what ought to be done … and sometimes I feel too
young to be always the one to judge, to decide…"

Heuston stood watching her in silence. Suddenly he took her hand
and drew it through his arm. She did not resist, and thus linked
they walked on slowly and without further speech through the cold
deserted streets. As they approached more populous regions she
freed her arm from his, and signalled to a taxi.

"May I come?"

"No. I'm going to meet Lita at the Cubist Cabaret. I promised to
be there by four."

"Oh, all right." He looked at her irresolutely as the taxi drew
up. "I wish to God I could always be on hand to help you when
you're bothered!"

She shook her head.

"Never?"

"Not while Aggie—"

"That means never."

"Then never." She held out her hand, but he had turned and was
already striding off in the opposite direction. She threw the
address to the chauffeur and got in.

"Yes; I suppose it IS never," she said to herself. After all,
instead of helping her with the Wyant problem, Stan had only
brought her another: his own—and hers. As long as Aggie Heuston,
a sort of lay nun, absorbed in High Church practices and the
exercise of a bleak but efficient philanthropy, continued to set
her face against divorce, Nona would not admit that Heuston had any
right to force it upon her. "It's her way of loving him," the girl
said to herself for the hundredth time. "She wants to keep him for
herself too—though she doesn't know it; but she does above all
want to save him. And she thinks that's the way to do it. I
rather admire her for thinking that there IS a way to save
people…" She pushed that problem once more into the back of
her mind, and turned her thoughts toward the other and far more
pressing one: that of poor Arthur Wyant's growing infirmity.
Stanley was probably right in not wanting to speak to Jim about it
at that particular moment—though how did Stanley know about Jim's
troubles, and what did he know?—and she herself, after all, was
perhaps the only person to deal with Arthur Wyant. Another interval
of anxious consideration made her decide that the best way would be
to seek her father's advice. After an hour's dancing she would feel
better, more alive and competent, and there would still be time to
dash down to Manford's office, the only place—as she knew by
experience—where Manford was ever likely to have time for her.

The door of his private office clicked on a withdrawing client, and
Dexter Manford, giving his vigorous shoulders a shake, rose from
his desk and stood irresolute.

"I must get out to Cedarledge for some golf on Saturday," he
thought. He lived among people who regarded golf as a universal
panacea, and in a world which believed in panaceas.

As he stood there, his glance lit on the looking–glass above the
mantel and he mustered his image impatiently. Queer thing, for a
man of his age to gape at himself in a looking–glass like a dago
dancing–master! He saw a swarthy straight–nosed face, dark
crinkling hair with a dash of gray on the temples, dark eyes under
brows that were beginning to beetle across a deep vertical cleft.
Complexion turning from ruddy to sallow; eyes heavy—would he put
his tongue out next? The matter with him was…

He dropped back into his desk–chair and unhooked the telephone
receiver.

"Mrs. James Wyant? Yes… Oh—OUT? You're sure? And you don't
know when she'll be back? Who? Yes; Mr. Manford. I had a message
for Mrs. Wyant. No matter."

He hung up and leaned back, stretching his legs under the table and
staring moodily at the heap of letters and legal papers in the
morocco–lined baskets set out before him.

"I look ten years older than my age," he thought. Yet that last
new type–writer, Miss Vollard, or whatever her name was, really
behaved as if … was always looking at him when she thought he
wasn't looking… "Oh, what rot!" he exclaimed.

His day had been as all his days were now: a starting in with a
great sense of pressure, importance and authority—and a drop at
the close into staleness and futility.

The evening before, he had stopped to see his doctor and been told
that he was over–working, and needed a nerve–tonic and a change of
scene. "Cruise to the West Indies, or something of the sort.
Couldn't you get away for three or four weeks? No? Well, more
golf then, anyhow."

Getting away from things; the perpetual evasion, moral, mental,
physical, which he heard preached, and saw practised, everywhere
about him, except where money–making was concerned! He, Dexter
Manford, who had been brought up on a Minnesota farm, paid his own
way through the State College at Delos, and his subsequent course
in the Harvard Law School; and who, ever since, had been working at
the top of his pitch with no more sense of strain, no more desire
for evasion (shirking, he called it) than a healthy able–bodied man
of fifty had a right to feel! If his task had been mere money–
getting he might have known—and acknowledged—weariness. But he
gloried in his profession, in its labours and difficulties as well
as its rewards, it satisfied him intellectually and gave him that
calm sense of mastery—mastery over himself and others—known only
to those who are doing what they were born to do.

Of course, at every stage of his career—and never more than now,
on its slippery pinnacle—he had suffered the thousand irritations
inseparable from a hard–working life: the trifles which waste one's
time, the fools who consume one's patience, the tricky failure of
the best–laid plans, the endless labour of rolling human stupidity
up the steep hill of understanding. But until lately these things
had been a stimulus: it had amused him to shake off trifles, baffle
bores, circumvent failure, and exercise his mental muscles in
persuading stupid people to do intelligent things. There was
pioneer blood in him: he was used to starting out every morning to
hack his way through a fresh growth of prejudices and obstacles;
and though he liked his big retaining fees he liked arguing a case
even better.

Professionally, he was used to intellectual loneliness, and no
longer minded it. Outside of his profession he had a brain above
the average, but a general education hardly up to it; and the
discrepancy between what he would have been capable of enjoying had
his mind been prepared for it, and what it could actually take in,
made him modest and almost shy in what he considered cultivated
society. He had long believed his wife to be cultivated because
she had fits of book–buying and there was an expensively bound
library in the New York house. In his raw youth, in the old Delos
days, he had got together a little library of his own in which
Robert Ingersoll's lectures represented science, the sermons of the
Reverend Frank Gunsaulus of Chicago, theology, John Burroughs,
natural history, and Jared Sparks and Bancroft almost the whole of
history. He had gradually discovered the inadequacy of these
guides, but without ever having done much to replace them. Now and
then, when he was not too tired, and had the rare chance of a quiet
evening, he picked up a book from Pauline's table; but the works
she acquired were so heterogeneous, and of such unequal value, that
he rarely found one worth reading. Mrs. Tallentyre's "Voltaire"
had been a revelation: he discovered, to his surprise, that he had
never really known who Voltaire was, or what sort of a world he had
lived in, and why his name had survived it. After that, Manford
decided to start in on a course of European history, and got as far
as taking the first volume of Macaulay up to bed. But he was tired
at night, and found Macaulay's periods too long (though their
eloquence appealed to his forensic instinct): and there had never
been time for that course of history.

In his early wedded days, before he knew much of his wife's world,
he had dreamed of quiet evenings at home, when Pauline would read
instructive books aloud while he sat by the fire and turned over
his briefs in some quiet inner chamber of his mind. But Pauline
had never known any one who wanted to be read aloud to except
children getting over infantile complaints. She regarded the
desire almost as a symptom of illness, and decided that Dexter
needed "rousing," and that she must do more to amuse him. As soon
as she was able after Nona's birth she girt herself up for this new
duty; and from that day Manford's life, out of office hours, had
been one of almost incessant social activity. At first the endless
going out had bewildered, then for a while amused and flattered
him, then gradually grown to be a soothing routine, a sort of mild
drug–taking after the high pressure of professional hours; but of
late it had become simply a bore, a duty to be persisted in because—
as he had at last discovered—Pauline could not live without it.
After twenty years of marriage he was only just beginning to
exercise his intellectual acumen on his wife.

The thought of Pauline made him glance at his clock: she would be
coming in a moment. He unhooked the receiver again, and named,
impatiently, the same number as before. "Out, you say? Still?"
(The same stupid voice making the same stupid answer!) "Oh, no; no
matter. I say IT'S NO MATTER," he almost shouted, replacing the
receiver. Of all idiotic servants—!

Miss Vollard, the susceptible type–writer, shot a shingled head
around the door, said "ALL right" with an envious sigh to some one
outside, and effaced herself before the brisk entrance of her
employer's wife. Manford got to his feet.

"Well, my dear—" He pushed an armchair near the fire, solicitous,
still a little awed by her presence—the beautiful Mrs. Wyant who
had deigned to marry him. Pauline, throwing back her furs, cast a
quick house–keeping glance about her. The scent she used always
reminded him of a superior disinfectant; and in another moment, he
knew, she would find some pretext for assuring herself, by the
application of a gloved finger–tip, that there was no dust on desk
or mantelpiece. She had very nearly obliged him, when he moved
into his new office, to have concave surbases, as in a hospital
ward or a hygienic nursery. She had adopted with enthusiasm the
idea of the concave tiling fitted to every cove and angle, so that
there were no corners anywhere to catch the dust. People's lives
ought to be like that: with no corners in them. She wanted to de–
microbe life.

But, in the case of his own office, Manford had resisted; and now,
he understood, the fad had gone to the scrap–heap—with how many
others!

"Not too near the fire." Pauline pushed her armchair back and
glanced up to see if the ceiling ventilators were working. "You DO
renew the air at regular intervals? I'm sure everything depends on
that; that and thought–direction. What the Mahatma calls mental
deep–breathing." She smiled persuasively. "You look tired,
Dexter … tired and drawn."

"Oh, rot!—A cigarette?"

She shook her small resolute head. "You forget that he's cured me
of that too—the Mahatma. Dexter," she exclaimed suddenly, "I'm
sure it's this silly business of the Grant Lindons' that's worrying
you. I want to talk to you about it—to clear it up with you.
It's out of the question that you should be mixed up in it."

Manford had gone back to his desk–chair. Habit made him feel more
at home there, in fuller possession of himself; Pauline, in the
seat facing him, the light full on her, seemed no more than a
client to be advised, or an opponent to be talked over. He knew
she felt the difference too. So far he had managed to preserve his
professional privacy and his professional authority. What he did
"at the office" was clouded over, for his family, by the vague word
"business," which meant that a man didn't want to be bothered.
Pauline had never really distinguished between practising the law
and manufacturing motors; nor had Manford encouraged her to. But
today he suspected that she meant her interference to go to the
extreme limit which her well–known "tact" would permit.

"You must not be mixed up in this investigation. Why not hand it
over to somebody else? Alfred Cosby, or that new Jew who's so
clever? The Lindons would accept any one you recommended; unless,
of course," she continued, "you could persuade them to drop it,
which would be so much better. I'm sure you could, Dexter; you
always know what to say—and your opinion carries such weight.
Besides, what is it they complain of? Some nonsense of Bee's, I've
no doubt—she took a rest–cure at the School. If they'd brought
the girl up properly there'd have been no trouble. Look at Nona!"

"Oh—Nona!" Manford gave a laugh of pride. Nona was the one warm
rich spot in his life: the corner on which the sun always shone.
Fancy comparing that degenerate fool of a Bee Lindon to his Nona,
and imagining that "bringing–up" made the difference! Still, he
had to admit that Pauline—always admirable—had been especially so
as a mother. Yet she too was bitten with this theosophical virus!

He lounged back, hands in pockets, one leg swinging, instinctively
seeking an easier attitude as his moral ease diminished.

"My dear, it's always been understood, hasn't it, that what goes on
in this office is between me and my clients, and not—"

"Oh, nonsense, Dexter!" She seldom took that tone: he saw that she
was losing her self–control. "Look here: I make it a rule never to
interfere; you've just said so. Well—if I interfere now, it's
because I've a right to—because it's a duty! The Lindons are my
son's cousins: Fanny Lindon was a Wyant. Isn't that reason
enough?"

"It was one of the Lindons' reasons. They appealed to me on that
very ground."

Pauline gave an irritated laugh. "How like Fanny! Always pushing
in and claiming things. I wonder such an argument took you in. Do
consider, Dexter! I won't for a minute admit that there CAN be
anything wrong about the Mahatma; but supposing there were…"
She drew herself up, her lips tightening. "I hope I know how to
respect professional secrecy, and I don't ask you to repeat their
nasty insinuations; in fact, as you know, I always take particular
pains to avoid hearing anything painful or offensive. But,
supposing there were any ground for what they say; do they realize
how the publicity is going to affect Bee's reputation? And how
shall you feel if you set the police at work and find them
publishing the name of a girl who is Jim's cousin, and a friend of
your own daughter's?"

Manford moved restlessly in his chair, and in so doing caught his
reflexion in the mirror, and saw that his jaw had lost its stern
professional cast. He made an attempt to recover it, but
unsuccessfully.

"But all this is too absurd," Pauline continued on a smoother note.
"The Mahatma and his friends have nothing to fear. Whose judgment
would you sooner trust: mine, or poor Fanny's? What really bothers
me is your allowing the Lindons to drag you into an affair which is
going to discredit them, and not the Mahatma." She smiled her
bright frosty smile. "You know how proud I am of your professional
prestige: I should hate to have you associated with a failure."
She paused, and he saw that she meant to rest on that.

"This is a pretty bad business. The Lindons have got their proofs
all right," he said.

Pauline reddened, and her face lost its look of undaunted serenity.
"How can you believe such rubbish, Dexter? If you're going to take
Fanny Lindon's word against mine—"

"It's not a question of your word or hers. Lindon is fully
documented: he didn't come to me till he was. I'm sorry, Pauline;
but you've been deceived. This man has got to be shown up, and the
Lindons have had the pluck to do what everybody else has shirked."

Pauline's angry colour had faded. She got up and stood before her
husband, distressed and uncertain; then, with a visible effort at
self–command, she seated herself again, and locked her hands about
her gold–mounted bag.

"Then you'd rather the scandal, if there is one, should be paraded
before the world? Who will gain by that except the newspaper
reporters, and the people who want to drag down society? And how
shall you feel if Nona is called as a witness—or Lita?"

"Oh, nonsense—" He stopped abruptly, and got up too. The
discussion was lasting longer than he had intended, and he could
not find the word to end it. His mind felt suddenly empty—empty
of arguments and formulas. "I don't know why you persist in
bringing in Nona—or Lita—"